In the summer of 1862, after a year of protracted fighting, Abraham Lincoln decided on a radical change of strategy - one that abandoned hope for a compromise peace and committed the nation to all-out war. The centerpiece of that new strategy was the Emancipation Proclamation: an unprecedented use of federal power that would revolutionize Southern society. In The Long Road to Antietam, Richard Slotkin, a renowned cultural historian, reexamines the challenges that Lincoln encountered during that anguished summer 150 years ago.

The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War

Despite the abundance of books on the Civil War, not one has focused exclusively on what was in fact the determining factor in the outcome of the conflict: differences in union and southern strategy. In The Grand Design, Stoker examines how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis identified their political goals and worked with their generals to craft the military means to achieve them - or how they often failed to do so.

From Winchester to Cedar Creek: The Shenandoah Campaign of 1864

In the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864, US Major General Philip H. Sheridan led his army to a series of decisive victories for the Union over Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early and the Confederate Army of the Valley. In From Winchester to Cedar Creek, author Jeffry D. Wert highlights Sheridan's victories in the critical area of the Virginia valley as defining moments of the Civil War. Sheridan's campaign ensured Confederate defeat in Virginia and ultimately contributed to Lincoln's reelection and the Union's victory in the Civil War.

Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction

In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo offers a marvelous portrait of the Civil War and its era, covering not only the major figures and epic battles, but also politics, religion, gender, race, diplomacy, and technology. He examines the strategy, the tactics, and the logistics of the Civil War and brings the most recent historical thinking to bear on emancipation, the presidency and the war powers, the blockade and international law, and the role of intellectuals, North and South.

Grant at Vicksburg: The General and the Siege

The 47-day siege of Vicksburg orchestrated by Grant resulted in the eventual surrender of the city and fulfilled a major strategic goal for the Union: command of the Mississippi River for the remainder of the war. In this revealing volume, Michael B. Ballard offers the first in-depth exploration of Grant's thoughts and actions during this critical operation, providing a never-before-seen portrait of the general in the midst of one of his most notable achievements.

Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War

Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House evokes a highly gratifying image in the popular mind - it was, many believe, a moment that transcended politics, a moment of healing, a moment of patriotism untainted by ideology. But as Elizabeth Varon reveals in this vividly narrated history, this rosy image conceals a seething debate over precisely what the surrender meant and what kind of nation would emerge from war. The combatants in that debate included the iconic Lee and Grant, but they also included a cast of characters previously overlooked.

Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee - the War They Fought, the Peace They Forged

They met in person only four times, yet these two men determined the outcome of the Civil War and cast competing styles for the reunited nation. Each the subject of innumerable biographies, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee have never before been paired as they are here. Exploring their personalities, their character, and their ethical, moral, political, and military worlds, William C. Davis finds surprising similarities between the two men.

The Fateful Lightning: A Novel of the Civil War

November 1864: As the Civil War rolls into its fourth bloody year, the tide has turned decidedly in favor of the Union. A grateful Abraham Lincoln responds to Ulysses S. Grant's successes by bringing the general east, promoting Grant to command the entire Union war effort while William Tecumseh Sherman now directs the Federal forces that occupy all of Tennessee.

Shiloh, 1862

SHILOH, 1862 - The Battle of Shiloh, fought in the wilderness of southern Tennessee in April 1862, marked a violent crossroads in the Civil War. What began as a surprise attack by Confederate troops on a Union stronghold to gain control of the Mississippi River Valley became a bloody two-day conflict that would eerily foretell the brutal reality of the next three years.

The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson That Defined a Nation

History tends to cast the early years of America in a glow of camaraderie when there were, in fact, many conflicts between the Founding Fathers - none more important than the one between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Their disagreement centered on the highest, most original public office created by the Constitutional Convention: the presidency. It also involved the nation's foreign policy, the role of merchants and farmers in a republic, and the durability of the union.

To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

It was the largest campaign ever attempted in the Civil War: the Peninsula campaign of 1862. General George McClellan planned to advance from Yorktown up the Virginia Peninsula and destroy the Rebel army in its own capital. But with Robert E. Lee delivering blows to the Union army, McClellan’s plan fell through at the gates of Richmond.

Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

The Civil War battle waged on September 17, 1862, at Antietam Creek, Maryland, was one of the bloodiest in the nation's history: On this single day, the battle claimed nearly 23,000 casualties. In Landscape Turned Red, the renowned historian Stephen Sears draws on a remarkable cache of diaries, dispatches, and letters to recreate the vivid drama of Antietam as experienced not only by its leaders but also by its soldiers, both Union and Confederate.

Bloody Spring: Forty Days That Sealed the Confederacy's Fate

In the spring of 1864, Robert E. Lee faced a new adversary: Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. Named commander of all Union armies in March, Grant quickly went on the offensive against Lee in Virginia. On May 4th, Grant's army struck hard across the Rapidan River into north central Virginia, with Lee's army contesting every mile. They fought for 40 days until, finally, the Union army crossed the James River and began the siege of Petersburg. The campaign cost 90,000 men - the largest loss the war had seen.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Last Fleet Action: Twentieth-Century Battles

This audiobook is a detailed and comprehensive account of the fighting from both sides. It provides the context of the battle, most obviously in terms of Japanese calculations and the search for "a fitting place to die" and "the chance to bloom as flowers of death."

Reveille in Washington

Margaret Leech’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history paints a wonderfully vivid and lively picture of Washington, DC, during the Civil War. In addition to the major events and figures such as Lincoln, Leech uses telling anecdotes and draws upon cameo players such as Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, and a Confederate lady spy to create a living portrait of a sleepy, unfinished city as it struggles to become the strong capital of a united nation.

First Day at Gettysburg: Crisis at the Crossroads

"Hassler's history will survive as our most detailed narrative of the first day's battle, examining the day's action so minutely that no succeeding historian of Gettysburg will be able to ignore it. Hassler's book has solid virtues in addition to its thoroughness of detail: it offers a persuasive argument that the first day's events largely determined the eventual outcome of the battle...." (American Historical Review)

Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation

In this sweeping account Clifford Dowdey recreates one of the most important battles in U.S. history. With vivid and breathtaking detail, Lee and His Men at Gettysburg is both a historical work and an honorary ode to the almost 50,000 soldiers who died at the fields of Pennsylvania. Written with an emphasis on the Confederate forces, the book captures the brilliance and frustration of a general forced to contend with overwhelming odds and in-competent subordinates.

1861: The Civil War Awakening

As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of our defining national drama, 1861 presents a gripping and original account of how the Civil War began. 1861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields. Early in that fateful year, a second American revolution unfolded, inspiring a new generation to reject their parents' faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal.

Lincoln

In the best-selling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography - a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.

The Seven Days: The Emergence of Robert E. Lee and the Dawn of a Legend

The Seven Days Campaign was a series of battles fought near Richmond at the end of June 1862. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had routed General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Depriving McClellan of a military decision meant the war would continue for two more years. The Seven Days depicts a critical turning point in the Civil War that would ingrain Robert E. Lee in history as one of the finest generals of all time.

Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America's Most Perilous Year

As 1862 dawned, the American republic was at death’s door. The federal government appeared overwhelmed, the U.S. Treasury was broke, and the Union’s top general was gravely ill. The Confederacy - with its booming economy, expert military leadership, and commanding position on the battlefield - had a clear view to victory. To a remarkable extent, the survival of the country depended on the judgment, cunning, and resilience of the unschooled frontier lawyer who had recently been elected president. Twelve months later, the Civil War had become a cataclysm but the tide had turned.

Roosevelt's Second Act: The Election of 1940 and the Politics of War

On August 31, 1939, nearing the end of his second and presumably final term in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was working in the Oval Office and contemplating construction of his presidential library and planning retirement. The next day German tanks had crossed the Polish border; Britain and France had declared war. Overnight the world had changed, and FDR found himself being forced to consider a dramatically different set of circumstances.

General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse

This sweeping history of the Civil War and the Confederacy is told through the lens of its most crucial army: the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by Robert E. Lee. General Lee's Army takes listeners across the Rebel landscape, from campfires to battlefields to their homes, as it portrays a world of life, death, healing, and hardship.

Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas

In this revelatory, dynamic biography, Benson Bobrick, profiles George H. Thomas, arguing that he was the greatest and most successful general of the Civil War. Because Thomas didn't live to write his memoirs, his reputation has been largely shaped by others, most notably Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, two generals with whom Thomas served and who diminished his successes in their favor in their own memoirs.

A Soldier's Passion for Order: Sherman

General William Tecumseh Sherman has come down to us as the implacable destroyer of the Civil War, notorious for his burning of Atlanta and his brutal march to the sea. A probing biography that explains Sherman's style of warfare and the threads of self-possession and insecurity that made up his character.

Publisher's Summary

A masterful account of the Civil War's turning point in the tradition of James McPherson's Crossroads of Freedom.

In the summer of 1862, after a year of protracted fighting, Abraham Lincoln decided on a radical change of strategy - one that abandoned hope for a compromise peace and committed the nation to all-out war. The centerpiece of that new strategy was the Emancipation Proclamation: an unprecedented use of federal power that would revolutionize Southern society.

In The Long Road to Antietam, Richard Slotkin, a renowned cultural historian, reexamines the challenges that Lincoln encountered during that anguished summer 150 years ago. In an original and incisive study of character, Slotkin re-creates the showdown between Lincoln and General George McClellan, the "Young Napoleon" whose opposition to Lincoln included obsessive fantasies of dictatorship and a military coup. He brings to three-dimensional life their ruinous conflict, demonstrating how their political struggle provided Confederate General Robert E. Lee with his best opportunity to win the war, in the grand offensive that ended in September of 1862 at the bloody Battle of Antietam.

A powerful, multi-dimensional description of a central pivot point in the war, this book shows Gen. McClellan in particular in all his complexity as a way to examine the incredible contradictions inherent in a democratic society that also enslaved millions. McClellan was basically a pro-white-supremacy northerner who wanted the union back together quickly so he could get elected president, and he seems to have considered turning his army toward Washington to do so!This audio performance, however, is very difficult to get through. Turn it to half-speed and try to ignore how he hits the word "AND" the exact same way every time (if you can) and maybe you can make it through. It feels like the reader has little comprehension as if he were reading nonsense words.

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